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Arista Networks Platform vs Cisco Nexus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Arista Networks Platform delivers good ROI, justifies higher costs with long-term savings, especially compared to Cisco and Juniper.
Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Nexus offers high ROI with stability, efficiency, and reliability, justifying higher costs with long-term productivity gains.
Speeding up our response times and reducing errors and incidents with automation and available APIs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Arista Networks Platform offers fast, proficient support, praised for direct engineer access and high customer satisfaction globally.
Sentiment score
7.2
Cisco Nexus technical support is efficient and knowledgeable, with mixed experiences but generally positive feedback on reliability and global reach.
They provide instant support and maintain commitments regarding replacement products.
According to my team’s feedback, we receive extended support from the Arista team.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Arista Networks Platform offers scalable, reliable networking for data centers, praised for network capacity, low latency, and intuitive management.
Sentiment score
7.8
Cisco Nexus is highly scalable and adaptable, offering seamless expansion and integration despite cost concerns.
Scalability is a key feature of Arista, owing to the possibilities to manage the entire data center network from a single console.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Arista Networks Platform is highly stable with minimal downtime, praised for reliability when following best practice configurations.
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Nexus is highly reliable and stable, with minor bugs occasionally reported, maintaining a strong reputation for uptime.
Initially, the stability of Cisco Nexus, particularly with the ACI, was problematic due to unstable codes, requiring replacements.
 

Room For Improvement

Arista Networks needs better documentation, integration, pricing, security, stability, management, community support, and network feature expansion.
Cisco Nexus needs enhancements in UI, integration, virtualization, automation, multi-tenancy, pricing, OS intuitiveness, stability, scalability, and AI integration.
Feature-wise, it addresses most customer requirements.
Arista Networks is currently less popular as they were initially more focused on data centers than campus networks.
When I talk about data centers, which are critical infrastructure and centralized application hubs, the Nexus platforms should be highly stable.
 

Setup Cost

Arista Networks is costly, with high hardware and licensing expenses, especially compared to Huawei and NETGEAR, affecting affordability.
Cisco Nexus is costly with complex licensing but valued for its premium features and long-term enterprise benefits.
Compared to Cisco, Arista routers are significantly cheaper.
Arista products are perceived as costly, especially compared to competitors like Cisco.
The price of Cisco Nexus is on the higher side due to the premium services Cisco offers.
 

Valuable Features

Arista Networks Platform is praised for its reliability, scalability, Linux shell, efficient management, automation, and unmatched monitoring capabilities.
Cisco Nexus provides high performance and flexibility with features enhancing network efficiency, making it ideal for large-scale networks.
Features include plug-and-play auto-discovery, allowing centralized configuration and management.
The most valuable features of Arista include low latency, scalability, and sustainability of the products.
The VPC feature of Cisco Nexus is great because it provides an active-active way of forwarding the traffic and avoids blocking any of the links.
 

Categories and Ranking

Arista Networks Platform
Ranking in Data Center Networking
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (10th)
Cisco Nexus
Ranking in Data Center Networking
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Data Center Networking category, the mindshare of Arista Networks Platform is 15.8%, down from 24.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 18.9%, up from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Networking
 

Featured Reviews

MarekSzafrański - PeerSpot reviewer
Affordable for enterprise-sized companies
Speaking about whether the product enhanced our company's data center scalability, I would say that it was a solution that was used in a banking company, where it served as a replacement for Cisco. Though Arista Networks Platform is similar to Cisco IOS CLI, I feel that the former product offers better prices compared to the latter tool. Arista Networks Platform office is more efficient at a lower cost. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. The tool is stable and cheaper than Cisco. I would say that Arista Networks Platform is 100 percent compatible with the existing infrastructure in my company. The impact of the tool's network telemetry on our company's troubleshooting practices was just good for the scope for which I need the product. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.
Joe Benítez - PeerSpot reviewer
Offer high performance capabilities and enables efficient data transmission and processing
Before Nexus, I used to have Catalyst 6500 switches. Those 6500 series chassis gave us a lot of problems. Too many problems, actually. And we had a Cisco ASA firewall blade within those chassis. And they were running outdated software. So, in fact, it was the firewall blade that caused us too many problems instead of the chassis. The chassis itself was working well and performing fine, but the firewall card was not suitable for our needs. That was one aspect. Additionally, those chassis had been in operation for more than five years. As we are a local government, we have a policy to renew hardware every five years. That's because we need to maintain all the hardware and software in the latest versions and keep up with the technology lifecycle of the technology we use.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Arista Networks Platform?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arista Networks Platform?
Arista products are perceived as costly, especially compared to competitors like Cisco.
What needs improvement with Arista Networks Platform?
Currently, Arista is too costly for its customers. Feature-wise, it addresses most customer requirements. However, we sometimes face challenges when integrating with proprietary protocols and solut...
What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?
The product's initial setup phase is very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?
The price of Cisco Nexus is on the higher side due to the premium services Cisco offers. Despite the cost, it offers valuable features and services.
What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?
When I talk about data centers, which are critical infrastructure and centralized application hubs, the Nexus platforms should be highly stable. Initially, the codes I received through ACI were qui...
 

Also Known As

7000 Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Internet Services
Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista Networks Platform vs. Cisco Nexus and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.